Guilding was born on 9 May 1797 in Kingstown,
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. He was one of six siblings, son of the Reverend John Guilding and his wife Sarah. In 1802, at the age of 5, he was sent to England, where he studied at Oxford University. In 1817, after receiving a B.A. degree, he returned to his home country. His father died in 1818, and he took up work as garrison chaplain and left for England in 1819. He corresponded with
Charles Darwin, providing him with notes on the natural history of the Caribbean region. He named this genus
Peripatus (1826). He included an excellent watercolor painting of the specimen, and a mention to the defensive mechanism of sticky liquid squirts. A translation into English from Guilding's description, originally written in Latin, shows how he first classified the specimen in the Class Mollusca, and how astonished he was for discovering a new species. He was also among the first to describe scale insects of the ground pearl family,
Margarodidae. Guilding's announced "Fauna" and "Pomona occidentalis" were never completed. The manuscripts were lost, together with his table of colors. Guilding's first wife died "in childbed” on 15 November 1827, leaving five children behind. A year later he married Charlotte Lydia Melville, of St. George's, Grenada. In 1831 he went on vacation to
Bermuda, where he died on 22 October. The cause of death was not recorded. == Bibliography ==